1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to processors and, more particularly, to instruction scheduling and execution within processors.
2. Description of the Related Art
Superscalar processors attempt to achieve high performance by issuing and executing multiple instructions per clock cycle and by employing the highest possible clock frequency consistent with the design. One method for increasing the number of instructions executed per clock cycle is out of order execution. In out of order execution, instructions may be executed in a different order than that specified in the program sequence (or “program order”). Certain instructions near each other in a program sequence may have dependencies which prohibit their concurrent execution, while subsequent instructions in the program sequence may not have dependencies on the previous instructions. Accordingly, out of order execution may increase performance of the superscalar processor by increasing the number of instructions executed concurrently (on the average). Another method related to out of order execution is speculative execution, in which instructions are executed subsequent to other instructions which may cause program execution to proceed down a different path than the path containing the speculative instructions. For example, instructions may be speculative if the instructions are subsequent to a particular instruction which may cause an exception. Instructions are also speculative if the instructions are subsequent to a predicted conditional branch instruction which has not yet been executed. Similarly, instructions may be out of order or speculatively scheduled, issued, etc.
Unfortunately, scheduling instructions for out of order or speculative execution presents additional hardware complexities for the processor. The term “scheduling” generally refers to selecting an instruction for execution. Typically, the processor attempts to schedule instructions as rapidly as possible to maximize the average instruction execution rate (e.g. by executing instructions out of order to deal with dependencies and hardware availability for various instruction types). These complexities may limit the clock frequency at which the processor may operate. In particular, the dependencies between instructions must be respected by the scheduling hardware. Generally, as used herein, the term “dependency” refers to a relationship between a first instruction and a subsequent second instruction in program order which requires the execution of the first instruction prior to the execution of the second instruction. A variety of dependencies may be defined. For example, a source operand dependency occurs if a source operand of the second instruction is a destination operand of the first instruction.
Generally, instructions may have one or more source operands and one or more destination operands. The source operands are input values to be manipulated according to the instruction definition to produce one or more results (which are the destination operands). Source and destination operands may be memory operands stored in a memory location external to the processor, or may be register operands stored in register storage locations included within the processor. The instruction set architecture employed by the processor defines a number of architected registers. These registers are defined to exist by the instruction set architecture, and instructions may be coded to use the architected registers as source and destination operands. An instruction specifies a particular register as a source or destination operand via a register number (or register address) in an operand field of the instruction. The register number uniquely identifies the selected register among the architected registers. A source operand is identified by a source register number and a destination operand is identified by a destination register number.
In addition to operand dependencies, one or more types of ordering dependencies may be enforced by a processor. Ordering dependencies may be used, for example, to simplify the hardware employed or to generate correct program execution. By forcing certain instructions to be executed in order with respect to certain other instructions, hardware for handling consequences of the out of order execution of the instructions may be omitted. For example, instructions which update special registers containing general processor operating state may affect the execution of a variety of subsequent instructions which do not explicitly access the special registers. Generally, ordering dependencies may vary from microarchitecture to microarchitecture.
While the scheduling mechanism respects dependencies, it is desirable to be as aggressive as possible in scheduling instructions out of order and/or speculatively in an attempt to maximize the performance gain realized. However, the more aggressive the scheduling mechanism (i.e. the fewer conditions which may prevent a particular instruction from being scheduled), the more likely the occurrence of an incorrectly executed instruction becomes. One recovery technique for incorrectly executed instructions is to purge the incorrectly executed instruction and all subsequent instructions from the processor pipeline and to refetch the incorrectly executed instruction (and subsequent instructions). Often, the purging and refetching is delayed from the discovery of incorrect execution for hardware simplicity (e.g. until the incorrectly executed instruction is the oldest instruction in flight). The average number of instructions actually executed per clock cycle is decreased due to the incorrect execution and the subsequent purging events. For aggressive scheduling mechanisms which encounter incorrect execution more frequently, the performance degradation attributable to this type of recovery mechanism may be substantial.
Accordingly, many scheduling mechanisms include another recovery technique for incorrectly executed instructions. In this technique, an instruction operation that is subsequently found to be incorrectly executed may be reissued or “replayed.” Thus, the penalty for incorrect execution of instruction operations may be reduced when compared to purging the incorrectly executed instruction operation and younger instruction operations from the pipeline and refetching the instruction operation.
However although there are benefits to reissuing instruction operations, in some cases a reissue mechanism may cause problems. For example, if instruction operations are continually replayed, excess power consumption and performance degradation may result.